The Voice of Pathé

For more than half a century, the film and newsreel company British Pathé documented almost every aspect of life-the remarkable and the run-of-the mill. The company's output really came into its own during the Second World War, when the distinctive and relentlessly chipper commentaries by its announcer Bob Danvers-Walker provided stirring encouragement during the Blitz and offered authoritative advice on how housewives struggling to feed their families on the ration could overcome privation and to 'make do and mend'. During the postwar period, public information films instructed citizens on welfare program enrollment and Pathé adopted a left wing political agenda before refocusing on the new consumer era. As this film reveals, for generations of cinemagoers it was the voice of British Pathé that expressed the values and the spirit of Britain.